


Ashes Over Embers

by cuttooth



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coda, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, a gentler world, spoilers MAG 119, will be Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 01:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuttooth/pseuds/cuttooth
Summary: After the fire, a little hope. The survivors regroup.





	Ashes Over Embers

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't finished writing anything in a long time, but I had to get this out before next week's episode inevitably tears my heart out. Stands to reason this would be the fandom to drag me back in. Coda to MAG 119, in a gentler world where nothing awful happens to the remaining team members.
> 
> Title by Martin Grech.

It is, unbelievably, still daytime when Jon stumbles out of the wax museum. His ears are ringing from the detonation, his lungs are on fire, and he’s fairly sure his right arm is broken. The building is an inferno behind him, and thankfully nothing made of wax or skin is emerging. He is, however, unimaginably relieved when he sees Basira walking towards him on unsteady legs. She looks as scorched and confused as he feels.

“Where’s Daisy?” he croaks hoarsely. She looks around, blinking smoke-reddened eyes.

“I, uh, I don’t know. We got separated when it all - you know. Tim?”

Jon shakes his head. Basira’s expression goes grim.

“Come on,” she says. “We have to go.”

“Shouldn’t we wait, see if Daisy - ”

“And be here when the police arrive? If Daisy’s alive, she can take care of herself. Better than any of us.”

She’s right, of course. They hobble to the car as quickly as they can manage, listening nervously for the wail of sirens. Basira drives, just this side of too fast, and Jon winces at each bump and pothole that jostles his bad arm. Basira glances at him.

“You all right?” 

“Arm’s broken, I think,” he grits out. 

“I’ll take a look when we get back to the B&B.”

Jon nods. They don’t speak for the rest of the drive.

The bed-and-breakfast is almost painfully normal, after the events of the day. They climb the stairs quietly to avoid the homeowners, who are a lovely couple in their fifties. It might be difficult to explain why they’re limping and covered in soot and very possibly blood after a day walking the coastal trails. Particularly when news of an explosion at the wax museum is about to hit the local headlines. 

They sit in the room Basira and Daisy had shared, all ruffled bedspreads and framed floral prints on the walls, while Basira examines Jon’s arm. It isn’t broken, but it _is_ dislocated, and Jon just manages not to scream when Basira pops the joint back into its socket. She’s come prepared for first aid, and searches through her bag until she finds a foam-padded sling. Jon tries not to look at Daisy’s bag, sitting on the floor beside Basira’s. 

“I should probably shower,” Jon gestures at his scorched and filthy form. Basira nods and pushes the sling into his hands.

“Me too,” she says. “Let me know if you need help getting your arm into that. They can be a bit tricky one-handed.”

In the room he had shared with Tim, Jon manages to manoeuvre himself under the shower without jogging his shoulder too much. Getting a shirt on afterwards proves painful, but he grits his teeth through it and even manages the sling. Then he goes back to Basira’s room, for no other reason than he can’t bear to be alone with his thoughts right now. She seems to feel the same, so she switches BBC News on the television, and they sit silently on opposite beds to wait. The familiar drone of Brexit squabbling allows Jon to almost relax, even.

About two hours later Basira gets a text.

“They’re here,” she says, and goes downstairs, returning a couple of minutes later with Melanie and Martin in tow. They both look worn, Melanie with the calm of suppressed rage, and Martin simply exhausted. Alarm crosses his face at the sight of Jon’s sling.

“Are you all right?” he demands. “What happened? Where’s Tim?”

“We’re okay, Martin,” Jon tells him, then amends: “Basira and I are okay. Tim...didn’t make it.”

“And we don’t know what happened to Daisy,” Basira adds pointedly.

“Oh,” says Martin. 

“But you stopped it?” Melanie’s tone is intent. Jon nods wearily.

“Just about. It was all thanks to Tim in the end. He saved us all.”

“So what exactly happened?” Melanie presses. Jon glances at Basira’s tight expression.

“I’m not sure now is the best time to discuss it,” he says. “We’re all - very tired.”

“But - ”

“Tomorrow, Melanie,” says Basira. “First we need to know what happened at your end.”

Melanie brightens a little at that. 

“We got them,” she says. “Both of Elias’ neat little murder confessions, on tape.”

“Piece of cake, really,” Martin adds, trying and failing to sound breezy. Melanie spares him a sympathetic look. 

“That should be enough, then,” says Jon. _I hope_ , he doesn’t add.

“I don’t understand why Martin and I had to come here, though,” Melanie says. “Why didn’t we just take this directly to the police?”

Jon shakes his head with a sigh. He hasn’t been looking forward to this bit.

“We can’t take it to the police.” 

“What are you talking about? Why not?”

“We can’t trust the police to do anything. Elias has too many contacts, too many people whose secrets he knows and can use - like he did with Daisy. If we take this to the police, it’ll get buried.”

“That’s ridiculous - ” Melanie begins, but Basira interrupts her.

“He’s right,” she says, eyes narrowed. “It would never go anywhere. They’d take the tapes, might even bring Elias in for questioning, but the evidence would disappear and nothing would happen.”

Melanie looks furious. “So why did we even bother getting the tapes, then?” she demands. “We might as well have just killed him when we had the chance!”

“We can’t,” Jon insists. “We can’t take the chance that what he said was true, that all of you would - ” He takes a deep breath to steady himself. 

“We can’t. What we can do, though, is blackmail him. Elias can deal with the police, but he’d rather not have to - and he definitely won’t want this information going public.”

“PR nightmare,” says Basira.

“Exactly. So we will give him back the tapes, and _not_ cause a giant public mess for him to clean up, and in return, he will let all of you go.”

There is stunned silence for about two seconds, and then they all start talking at once.

_“So we’re just going to let him get away with it?!”_

_“You really think this will work?”_

_“But what about you?”_

“This is the only option,” Jon insists, raising his voice to speak over them. “Elias won’t lose his Archivist, not even for the threat of the tapes going public. And as long as I’m at the Institute I can keep an eye on him, try to stop him doing anything - Well, anything world-ending at least. This isn’t up for discussion.”

Melanie looks about to protest again, but thinks better of it, shaking her head fiercely. Martin says nothing. Basira nods thoughtfully.

“Thanks, Jon,” she says. “It - means a lot, that you’d do this for us.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he jokes weakly. “He might just kill us.”

The attempt at levity falls flat and the room goes silent. Jon clears his throat awkwardly.

“Well,” he says. “We should probably all get some rest. Tomorrow may be a long day.”

Martin trails Jon down the hall to the room the two of them will be sharing. Then he stands awkwardly in the doorway, fiddling with one of the straps on his backpack. Jon gestures to the bed nearest the door.

“That was, uh, Tim's bed. Yours now, if that’s all right. You know, I don’t know how we were planning to manage this with three of us to a room, these beds are hardly big enough for two. Someone would have had to sleep on the floor.”

He realizes he’s rambling and snaps his mouth shut. Martin drops his backpack onto the bed and opens it, pulling out a bulky black tape recorder. He holds it out to Jon, at arm’s length.

“This is everything that happened,” he says. “Elias said you’d listen to it anyway, and I thought you should hear it before we go back, so there’d be no, well, surprises.”

Jon takes the recorder, trying to ignore the cold thrill that wriggles through his brain at the prospect of fresh knowledge. That’s the Archivist, that’s not _him_. 

“I’m going to go and take a walk,” Martin says. “Get some fresh air, stretch my legs after being cooped up in the car for hours. Uh, take your time.”

He backs up through the door and shuts it behind him. Jon listens to his footsteps along the landing and down the stairs. Then he takes a deep breath and switches on the tape.

He listens to the whole thing through, twice. By the end of the second playthrough, he is physically trembling with some combination of anger and grief and exhaustion. Jon can’t tell how much of that feeling is his, and how much is absorbed from the tape itself, from _Martin_. He also realizes that it doesn’t matter.

Jon’s jacket is hanging on the door. He pats the pockets down until he finds a packet of cigarettes. With a shaky hand he extracts one, and a lighter. He opens the door quietly, not wanting to draw attention, and heads downstairs, out the front door and around to the side of the house. A small cigarette bin is situated back there, with a sign from the homeowners asking guests to kindly confine smoking to this area, and dispose of their butts appropriately. Jon lights his cigarette and inhales, his mind racing. 

He shouldn’t have let Martin do that, not after what seeing it did to Melanie. Except that’s not right, is it? Jon didn’t _let_ Martin do it, anymore than - as Elias realized on that damned tape - he _made_ him. Martin decided to do it, because he wanted to help, the way Martin always wants to help. Whatever “helping” involves, whether it’s making a cup of tea with just the right amount of sugar, or walking into the metaphorical lion’s den eyes open, ready for the agony to come, he’ll do it. Because he’s Martin bloody Blackwood, and that’s what he does. 

Jon’s smoked his cigarette almost all the way to the end before Melanie joins him. She has a cigarette between her lips and is raising her lighter to it before she sees him. She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just stands a few feet away from him, taking in long drags. Finally, she turns towards him and exhales an exasperated puff of smoke.

“So did he give it to you?” 

“What?”

“I know he brought it with him, he told me he wanted you to listen to it first, and then _Jon can decide what to tell the rest of you_.” She sounds wound tight with frustration. “I honestly don’t know what he sees in you, to trust you so much.”

_Neither do I_ , Jon wants to say, but that’s less true than it was half an hour ago. He still doesn’t understand _why_ , but the _what_ has been made undeniably, achingly clear. 

“It’s his tape,” he tells her. “He’ll have to decide.”

Melanie finishes her cigarette and grinds it out under her foot.

“I don’t know how you can even consider letting Elias get away with what he’s done - what he’s _still_ doing. And I don’t know what was on that tape, but of all people I have a pretty good idea. At the very least you could try being a little kinder.”

She stalks away. Jon stubs out the butt of his cigarette before it can burn his fingers, and drops it - along with Melanie’s - into the ashtray. The sun is setting behind clouds as he heads back inside. This day is, finally, almost over. The room is empty when he returns, except for the tape recorder sitting on the dressing table. Jon scowls at it. 

It’s nearly an hour later when Martin cracks open the door, tapping faintly on it as he does. 

“It’s your room too, Martin, do come in,” Jon tells him. Martin comes in. He sits on the edge of his bed, looking at Jon warily.

“Soooo…” he opens, “Did you, erh - ?”

“I listened to it,” says Jon. “I, uh, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Oh!” Martin sounds mildly surprised to hear it, and Jon winces internally. “That’s - it’s fine. I’m fine, no harm done. I just - didn’t want it to be a surprise, you know? Any of it.”

“Martin - ” Jon begins, with no idea how he’s going to continue. Fortunately, Martin cuts him off at once.

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” he says. “Not right now, anyway. It’s been a long day. Actually, not ever would probably be best. It’s fine, it’s not something I’m, I’m _upset_ about, or ashamed, or anything. It’s just - well, you know.”

“I - All right,” Jon agrees. Martin looks something between relieved and agonized for a moment, then changes the subject.

“So do you really think it will work? With Elias?”

“I - I think it will. He likes having all of you trapped at the Institute, but not as much as he likes operating in secret. I think that the tapes, along with a promise that I’ll stop fighting and be a good little Archivist, should be enough. I certainly hope so.”

Martin frowns down at his hands, seemingly trying to decide something, then nods.

“If it works,” he says, nervous but determined, “I won’t be leaving with the others.”

“What?” says Jon. “Why on earth would you say that?”

Martin gives him a watery smile.

“I told you, didn’t I, how I started working at the Institute? And why? I’ve been there a long time, Jon - longer than you. If I left now, my CV would basically read _Job Experience - Researcher at spooky organization, oh, and also about six months at Tesco when I was seventeen_. Where would I even go?”

“Anywhere!” Jon huffs in frustration. “Anywhere is better than the Institute, Martin! I know why you started there, yes, but I also listened to that bloody tape - you don’t have to martyr yourself for a mother who - ”

Jon bites his tongue before he can say something unforgivable. Martin shakes his head. There are tears in his eyes, but he’s still smiling.

“It’s not that,” he says. “And it’s not _you_ either, before you start getting a big head about it. I mean, it _is_ you, a bit, but it’s also… I'm part of the Institute, Jon, as much as you are. How could I just leave and live a normal life, knowing what I know about...everything? You know, all-powerful entities that can destroy the world and all that. I can’t walk away from that, not when I can help. And let’s face it, you do need someone to fetch the tea and do the legwork and help you stand up to your eldritch boss.” 

Jon gives a feeble laugh. He’s been preparing himself, ever since he decided what he was going to do, for the idea of being alone at the Archives. The thought of not being is heartening, even though he knows it’s selfish to even consider it. The thought of having Martin there with him, brave and loyal and kind, warms him on a number of levels he’s not sure he’s ready to consider. 

“I suppose I can’t make you quit,” he says.

“No,” Martin replies firmly. “You really can’t.”

“But I can make Elias agree that you can leave anytime you want.”

“Whatever will make you feel better.”

“Thank you, Martin. For everything.”

“I, oh, well...you’re welcome?”

Later that night Jon dreams about skin and wax and the mad crooning of the calliope. He wakes with a hand on his shoulder and a choked cry in his throat. The hand belongs to Martin, who’s sitting on the edge of Jon’s bed with an expression of concern. 

“You were sort of thrashing around,” he says quietly. “I thought I should check.”

Jon’s heart is still pounding with the closeness of the dream, his breathing ragged. Martin’s hand is warm and solid on his shoulder, grounding him, making the horror fall back just a little.

“Jughh,” he tries, then clears his throat. “Just a, uh, bad dream.” 

Martin nods, understanding, and takes his hand off Jon’s shoulder. Or would, if Jon’s good hand didn’t reflexively grab his wrist, holding it in place. 

“Oookay,” Martin says carefully. “Do you want me to stay here for a while, then?”

Jon gets a hold of himself, enough to release Martin’s hand, but not enough to pretend he’s all right. He’s just - he’s _tired_ of pretending he’s all right. He’s tired of pushing people away, of defending himself from anyone who might possibly care about him. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I just - I mean, yes? If you don’t mind.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

They stay there in the dark for some time. Jon listens to Martin’s breathing, steadies his own to match it as his heart rate returns to normal. Martin’s fingers move a little on Jon’s shoulder, just this side of stroking, in a way that he has to admit is soothing. It’s nice. 

Eventually, the dream retreats enough that Jon feels he might be able to sleep again. But he needs to make the most of this fragile bravery while he has it, this courage to let himself be vulnerable for once. If he lets this chance go, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to find it again. 

“Martin - ” he begins, reaches up to grasp the hand on his shoulder again. 

“Yes, Jon?” 

“The tape - the things you said you didn’t want to talk about. I think we should, when we get back. I mean, assuming it all goes okay, we don’t know what’s going to happen, we might not even - ” He stops himself. “We should talk.”

“I - all right. If you want to?” Martin sounds breathless now, like he’s not sure this is real and won’t let himself believe it for fear of disappointment. Jon threads their fingers together and squeezes, to remove any chance of misunderstanding.

“I do,” he says, before releasing Martin’s hand. 

Martin’s weight lifts off the mattress and Jon hears him shuffle carefully back to his own bed. A few minutes pass in silence, and he is almost asleep when Martin speaks again, so quiet Jon can barely hear him.

“Thank you, Jon.”

“What for?” 

“For not dying.”

Jon sighs. 

“You too, Martin.”


End file.
